The album contains ten boards made in lithography technique, on which the author presented the appearance of Polish costumes across centuries and different social classes.
On the central panel depicting the king and the court, the artist placed the dates of their reign, coats of arms, and seals.
[3] In 1879, Matejko published Explanations of Ten Tables of Clothes in Poland, an album gathering information about the works of art and places the artist referenced and used when drawing coats of arms and figures for individual groups.
For example, on the third panel, the figure of the king, which is a drawing from a sculpture by Veit Stoss, represents Kazimierz Jagiellończyk, and not Władysław Jagiełło, as Matejko said.
Sketches and studies of figures, costumes, weapons, and coats of arms mostly come from the collections of the National Museum in Krakow, the Jan Matejko House.
The artist's album and diary, called Skarbczyk, has expanded over the years with drawings on tracing paper, studies, and notes.
The files contained a variety of notes, watercolors, engravings, drawings, and reproductions, which were a great source of information from various fields of culture for him.
[3] Matejko selected images of people in historical costumes based on thousands of copies and drawings collected in Skarbczyk, Among the others, there are sculptures by Veit Stoss from St. Mary's Church and Wawel Cathedral, portraits of bishops from the Franciscan church, portraits of kings, and images of professors of the Jagiellonian University, an 18th-century painting of the Dance of Death from the Bernardine church, The drawings and notes made during the trips, as well as the analysis of sculptures, paintings, medals, and seals, allowed Matejko to see many figures in authentic clothes and to collect extensive material on the costumes of courts, scholars, clergy, townspeople, nobility, and magnates.
[3] The artist was aware of the enormous amount of material that needed to be collected to develop an accurate Polish costume design history album and he was the first to publish a source work in this field.